Content identification may be performed through fingerprinting. Fingerprints of content may be verified anywhere content is stored, forwarded, transmitted, or received. For example, fingerprints of content may be verified at the ISP level and even at the home device level. Once content has been identified policies can be attached to actions on that content, e.g. for copyright protection. Such content identification may be used as an alternative to digital rights management or in addition to digital rights management techniques. Content identification can be performed by means of fingerprint and/or watermark techniques. Fingerprint techniques involve deriving an identifier which uniquely identifies the content itself, regardless of the way the content is represented. Watermark techniques can be used to embed an identifier in a copy of a content item in a way in which it is difficult to remove the watermark identifier from the content. Such a watermark can be used to trace the origin of a copy of a content item. Fingerprinting and watermarking is relevant, for example, in a network data transport server for identifying the content being transported and in a consumer electronics device for identifying the content being received or rendered. To detect the fingerprint or watermark of a content item, the content item is processed at baseband audio/video level, which is computationally expensive from a processing point of view and may involve de-multiplexing and decoding (e.g. decompressing) of the coded data.